


Nori

by afinch



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, trick or treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 14:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12559840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/afinch
Summary: Before the Gobblers, the children told plenty of other ghost stories. Lyra adds her own to the mix.





	Nori

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoxinus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoxinus/gifts).



"... and that's why," the boy continued, "To this day, the Witch will come steal your soul if you summon her correctly."

Roger sat next to Lyra, holding her hand tightly with one hand, the other tightly around Salcilia, who was formed as a giant, protective lion. Lyra looked bored, but Pan was huddled in her breast pocket, a shivering field mouse. 

"That ent nothing," Lyra challenged. "Weren't even a little scary."

"And you can do better?" challenged a girl.

"Right," said Lyra, grinning at the invitation. She leaned in towards the group of children of Jordan College. They had been largely forgotten by the scholars and servants, who were busy hosting a party at the Master's behest, a vast and lavish costume ball. Lyra was keen to sneak in and attend in some way, but word had gotten round to the staff and scholars, who had kept a firm grip on her until it was time for them to depart. She was left in the care of several of the older children, with explicit instructions that none were to leave the large hall they were gathered in until they were fetched, which wasn't likely to be until late into the night, so several cots had been brought up, with stacks of blankets. Several of the younger children had gone to bed, but Lyra had rebuffed the attempts of the older children to put her to bed, and had dragged Roger with her, insisting the two were plenty old enough to hear their stories. 

Now here they were, each having already taken a turn to telling a tale, each tale getting wider and taller as the night went on. Lyra found most of them unimaginative at best. 

"Now this here comes from the gyptians and was told to me by none other than Billy Costa, who got it from his brother, who got it from their mother, Ma Costa. You all ever heard of Lord Knox?"

They shook their heads. Pan peeked out from Lyra's pocket, and climbed down into her lap, changing into a white ermine as he did. He curled lazily in her lap and licked his paw as she continued. "He was one of the greatest leaders the gyptians ever had. Negotiated for a lot of water rights they didn't have, and kept the Magisterium from imposing a child cap on 'em. But that's not what he's best known for. He's best known for the Manger Rebellion in which over 200 Magisterium men just _vanished_ as they were coming to stop they gyptians from pulling out of port."

"Why didn't they just let the rats go?" asked a boy. 

Roger, having heard at least the beginning of this story, piped up, "Cos of the unbaptized children."

Lyra nodded, "Roger's right. The gyptians, despite being water walkers, don't do what the Magisterium wants and won't do all the fancy dress and water pouring, so they were all set to stop 'em, and bless the children all proper. All anyone knows is the Magisterium men went into Manger, where the gyptians said they were gonna fight to every last man to keep the landwalkers from taking their children - cos once a gyptian lets the Magisterium touch 'em, they lose all rights to 'em and it's like they 'ent even gyptian anymore - but all that left Manger were the gyptians on their boats. They never said anything, and the Magisterium never did find the bodies, so they had to let the gyptians get away with."

"Not an impressive story," said the boy that Lyra had scoffed at earlier.

She shot a withering glance at him, "That's cos I'm just setting it up, so you know where all the pieces are. You can't have a good story if you don't have the pieces."

"Yea," chimed another boy, "like what went wrong with yours!"

The other children laughed, and Lyra waited until they had calmed down before continuing. 

"But I know for a fact that Lord Knox made a deal with the devil hisself and summoned up Nori, a water devil."

"Aw, you're full of it," said a girl, to several echoes of the same.

"No I ent," Lyra said fiercely. "Roger was there with me when Billy was telling us, and he seen it, and Billy ent a liar, not about this, right Roger?"

And Roger nodded, Salcilia now a seagull to emphasize Lyra's story. 

Another kid chimed in, "Nori's the one who makes you go all mad, innit she?"

"I thought that was a Mor-i-gan or something."

"What's the one that makes you lose your way?"

"Grind-something, I thought."

"It were Nori for this one," Lyra said firmly, and the children stopped their side chatter to let Lyra finish telling her story. 

"Now Nori is a special sorta water devil. It 'ent all about making you lose your way or anything special like that. No, what Nori does, is when her long seaweed fingers touch you, they send you to another place. And not like, back home, or to your grandparents, or even here to Jordan. No, when Nori touches you, she sends you to a completely different world."

"Like heaven and hell?"

Lyra shook her head, "Like worse. You ever hold your breath under the water in the bath just to see how long you can? And your lungs get all tight and you think it hurts so much and just when you can't take it, you lift your head and it's over?" She'd asked it as a question, but she wasn't expecting a response back. Roger shifted closer to Lyra, Salcilia now mimicking Pan as a snow ermine and coiled protectively in Roger's lap. Lyra was paying no mind to that, her eyes searching out each child one by one until the suspense had build up long enough. 

"Nori sends you to a place like that. A place of just water, there's so much water everywhere, and you can't breath, so you just drown, but it's an immortal place, so you're always alive, just the whole time, the only thing you ever know is slowly drowning over and over again, and there's no escape from it. Ever. You can't lift your head and have it end. It's why you always jump when something touches you in the water, even if it's in the lake. Cos if it's Nori, you'll be always drowning and never dead."

She sat back and watched the room. Her story hadn't been like the others, for shock value, but for quiet horror. It seemed to be working, with several of the children looking uneasy. Lyra's story would scare them for longer than a quick thrill and a heartbeat that slowly returned to normal. Lyra's story would be scaring them every time they dipped a toe into the water. 

"But it's not for real, right?" Roger whispered to her, as the next child began to tell his tale. 

"Course not," Lyra reassured Roger. "The water's just fine."

But just in case, for the next several weeks, Roger dipped his washcloth into the bath water first, just to be on the safe side.


End file.
